Traditional luminaires can be turned ON and OFF, and in some cases may be dimmed, usually in response to user activation of a relatively simple input device, such as a light switch. Often, traditional luminaires are controlled individually or as relatively small groups at separate locations. Each of the light sources in a luminaires are driven ON and OFF or dimmed by a driver circuit, e.g., for a light emitting diode (LED) light source, or a ballast, e.g. for a fluorescent light source.
Unfortunately, the driver circuit will typically be produced in different variants. In the case of an LED light source, for example, each variant of the driver circuit typically only supports a single lighting control protocol, such as digital addressable lighting interface (DALI), 0-10 Volts (V), digital multiplex signal (DMX), one-wire universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART)—e.g., light emitting diode (LED) code values, etc. When the luminaire does actually support multiple protocols, often users must perform some configuration step to manually switch the luminaire into the desired protocol.
A universal driver control interface is needed to overcome these and other limitations in the art.